A Review of French Orientalists’ Studies on Tārīkh-i Jahāngushāy and Jami‘ al-Tawārikh

Among the historical books written during the Mongol era, Tārīkh-i Jahāngushā (The History of The World Conqueror) by Aṭā Malek Joveynī and Jami‘ al-Tawārikh (Compendium of Chronicles) by Rashid al-Din Hamadāni stand out as superior to other books for a variety of reasons and are typically regarded as distinct and privileged sources. About five hundred years after the Mongol invasion over much of Asia, in nineteenth-century Europe, where philological researches were prevalent in the circles of orientalists, these two books were favored by some French scholars. The reason for such acceptance was that, on the one hand, they had not forgotten reminiscences of the relation between their kings and the Mongol rulers during the Crusades and, on the other hand, the narrative of Iranian historians about the Mongol invasion and conquest was interesting to them. Thus, based on the numerous manuscripts available at the Royal Library of Paris, they launched an extensive research on the content of these two books and their authors, and published the results of their studies, along with excerpts from the books and translations into French. The present article attempts to critically analyze these studies while introducing them. Familiarity with such research studies, if accompanied by consideration of the works done in recent decades, can provide a clear picture of the approaches of Western Orientalists in dealing with the historical texts of Iran and Islam in the last two centuries.